Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, has shared her perspective on the president’s brief friendship with Elon Musk.
The Republican accepted more than $288 million in campaign donations from the Tesla, SpaceX, and X boss last year and rewarded him with a role as a special adviser in charge of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk left the role in late May having fallen out with several cabinet members and after disagreeing profoundly with Trump about the impact of his “Big, Beautiful Bill” and its effect on the national debt and immediately entered into a bitter and highly personal war of words with the president, conducted largely across social media.
Speaking to Miranda Devine on The New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, Wiles, 68, agreed with the host’s suggestion that the South African-born tech impresario “had a sort of fatherly fixation with Donald Trump that I guess inevitably was going to blow up at some point.”
“The president was very, very kind to him, and Elon had so much to offer us. He knew things we didn’t know. He knew people and technologies that we didn’t know. It was a great thing when it was a great thing, and had a very, I think, a very troublesome ending,” she added.
Asked why it had all gone so sour, Wiles answered: “I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I don’t know. I know that what has been said doesn’t ring accurate to me but I don’t know.
“I enjoy working with Elon. I think he is a fascinating person and sees the world differently, and I think that’s probably what the president saw, too. Just a little bit different than the average Joe. But it certainly came to… not a good ending.”
Wiles – who, along with Chris LaCivita, masterminded Trump’s winning presidential run last year – added that she thought Musk “might be the world’s smartest man” and pointed out that he provided input about “business and organizations and government and insight into people that were really important, I think, in the very early days, particularly during [the] transition.”
Musk’s initial spat with Trump early last month was focused on the tax and spending megabill, which the former called a “disgusting abomination” and “pork-filled,” leading the president to say he was “disappointed” with the criticism from his erstwhile “first buddy.”
From there, it all became much more personal, with Musk alleging that the real reason Trump’s Justice Department had not released its files on the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was because the president himself was mentioned in them, a claim the president angrily refuted.
The feud fell silent for several weeks but kicked off again when Trump’s signature legislation reached the Senate last week, leading the president to threaten his ex-ally with deportation and cuts to government subsidies benefiting his businesses.
Musk retaliated by launching his own political party, the America Party, to peel votes away from both Republicans and Democrats, which led Trump to comment that the world’s richest man had “gone off the rails” and become a “trainwreck.”
Wiles did disagree with Devine when she floated the idea that jealousy might have played a role in the falling out between the two men, saying, revealingly: “That doesn’t sound like Elon.”
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